There were many missed opportunities for South Africa to use its regional muscle to force Zanu-PF towards a path beneficial to Zimbabweans and South Africa. Now the crisis in Zimbabwe has spilled into South Africa, whose citizens are no longer willing to bear the pain.

Zimbabwe's ruling party, Zanu-PF, enjoyed an unchecked majority in government from 1980 to 1999. A new political outfit, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was formed in 1999. This was during the "No" vote campaign which eventually led to the rejection of the proposed constitution in a referendum held in February 2000. Four months later, the MDC won 57 seats in parliament, while Zanu-PF managed 62. It was at this moment that Zanu-PF realised its grip on power was under real threat. Instead of interrogating the issues that had made people turn their back on it, Zanu-PF turned to violence. As many as 107 people were documented as murdered between March 2000 and March 2002. State repression, censorship and lawfare increased.

This is the environment that punctuated the 2002 presidential elections in Zimbabwe that pitted Robert Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai against each other. It is this same environment, coupled with the changing geopolitical dynamics, that pushed the then president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, to appoint a judicial observer mission (JOM) led by former high court judges Dikgang Moseneke and Sisi Khampepe. Its mandate was to observe whether the legal framework under which the elections in Zimbabwe took...